


Chuck Palahniuk, Mark Hoppus, and Pete Wentz

by feverbeats



Category: Bandom RPF
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-30
Updated: 2009-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-05 12:49:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blink 182 is the first band Spencer really <i>listens</i> to, mostly thanks to Ryan, who is obsessed with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chuck Palahniuk, Mark Hoppus, and Pete Wentz

**Author's Note:**

> Written for wordsaremyfaith. Also includes one-sided Ryan/Brendon, mentions of Brendon/Brent and Brendon/Jon.

It starts . . . It starts a lot of places, actually.

It starts when Spencer accidently walks in on Ryan jerking off to a photo of Pete Wentz. He's biting his lip and staring intently at it, looking almost like he's about to cry.

It starts when Spencer asks him about it a week later and Ryan says gay people are perverts.

It starts with the flat, dead tone in Ryan's voice when he says it.

It starts before all of that, though, with the bruise under Ryan's eye. They're just kids, and Spencer doesn't know enough to keep his mouth shut, and he asks about it. Ryan goes pale and quiet and doesn't really answer. From that day on, Spencer makes it his mission to stop Ryan from looking like that ever again.

Ryan's a little jerk even back then, possible heart of gold notwithstanding. He's also brilliant in a sort of quiet, weird way, and Spencer lets himself get stupidly attached. All he knows, is that from the day he meets Ryan, he's got to be there for him, for both their sakes.

When Ryan's mom leaves, Spencer sits with him for hours, squeezing his hand and watching him stare into space.

There are more bruises after that, for years. There are split lips and once a bruised rib, and always bruises under his eyes, mingling with the dark circles from staying up too late going online.

Ryan is there for Spencer, too, of course. When Spencer gets a little sister, Ryan smiles like he doesn't know what the right reaction is and says, "I've always wanted siblings." Spencer doesn't say that Ryan's like a brother to him. He doesn't figure out why for a very long time.

They grow up together, Ryan getting quieter and smarter and more talented, Spencer sometimes feeling like he's running to catch up with Ryan and sometimes feeling like Ryan would disappear if he weren't there.

He doesn't define his whole life in terms of Ryan, though. Not really.

There's music, too, of course. Blink 182 is the first band Spencer really _listens_ to, mostly thanks to Ryan, who is obsessed with them.

Sometimes, Ryan will put in a CD and play one Blink song or another over and over, and Spencer can't help but think that he's supposed to understand how Ryan's feeling from that, but he never can.

When Spencer gets really fed up with Ryan, he scribbles lyrics in some notebook Ryan will never open.  
_At the risk of sounding rude  
Just who the fuck do you think you are  
To tell me what you expect of me today?_

Ryan never does _tell_ him anything, though, which makes it worse. Spencer doesn't like playing his word games, guessing games, lyric games.

Ryan's taste in music gets a little better as he gets older, but it remains just as cryptic. He turns up "Vampires Will Never Hurt You" really loud and Spencer decides it's a stupid metaphor.

Then comes _fucking_ Fall Out Boy. Ryan buys the shirts and the albums and everything, but there's something more, too. He starts caring about the people in the bands, too. It's not like he didn't write porn about Mark and Tom back in the day, too, but this is different. This feels like the edge of ambition, and it excites Spencer.

And that's not how it starts, but that's how everyone else will remember it starting. No one will remember Blink or the garage or the sleep-overs or the swelling below Ryan's eye.

Years and years later, Spencer wonders about the elaborate designs Ryan sketches under his eyes, and he wonders about the bruise. He never asks, because by now he's supposed to know better.

*

So, best friends. They suck. Spencer figured _that_ one out years ago, when he first _met_ Ryan. They're doing pretty well, though, until Brent. Brent adds a sudden imbalance to their friendship. Three is such an unstable number, and Spencer wavers for weeks, unsure which one of them is going to be pushed aside.

Ryan makes it work, though. He pulls Brent into their little group until he fits into place neatly, or something close to it. Spencer tries very hard to hate Brent at first, but as it becomes clear that Ryan isn't looking for a new best friend, Spencer begins to breathe easily again.

Too bad he gets taken off guard when his defenses are down.

Brendon Urie may be a tiny, awkward, Mormon dork, but he's still mind-blowingly gorgeous. It's mostly his voice, and the way he suddenly gets pumped full of confidence when he's singing. Ryan clearly notices this instantly. Brent sure as _hell_ does. Spencer does too, and he doesn't even have to _work_ to hate Brendon.

Unfortunately, hating him doesn't work for long. He's really _nice_. More than that, Ryan is vicious to him. Spencer has to be nice, to make up for it. After a few weeks of getting a proper band together, Spencer asks Ryan why he's so fucking _cold_ to Brendon.

At first, Ryan doesn't answer. He just watches Brendon across the room as he and Brent warm up.

"Hey," Spencer says, tapping the couch between himself and Ryan.

Ryan turns to him somewhat jerkily. "I just wish he wouldn't _broadcast_ it," he says, face tight with something like fear.

It takes Spencer a second, but he figures it out fast enough. "No, you don't," he says, puzzled. Ryan isn't homophobic. That doesn't even make _sense_. He's spent _years_ talking about how Gerard and Frank and Pete and Patrick are all fucking. _And jerking off to photos of Pete_, Spencer thinks. _And denying it the next day_.

Ryan ignores him. "It just bugs me," he says, casting a glance at Brendon, who is hanging all over Brent, laughing and natural, finally.

_Oh_. Spencer wants to swear. It isn't that Brendon is gay. It's that he's hanging all over someone _not Ryan_.

*

Spencer doesn't realize how deep in he is until he sees the old pictures Ryan posted on a certain livejournal community ages ago. He stares at the screen, scrolling over Ryan's skinny chest, tight pants. He shivers. He's torn between being disturbingly turned on and wanting to freak out on Ryan and tell him never to post stuff like that again.

It doesn't matter, though. Ryan has withdrawn, both from the internet and the world. Spencer can relax again.

That is, until they actually meet Pete Wentz.

*

"Your mouth is supposed to be for singing, not for sucking Pete Wentz's dick!"

"Well," Ryan says softly, "I can't sing all that well."

They're in Spencer's living room, and they're fighting for the fifth time since Ryan met Pete. Spencer is scared and furious and maybe he doesn't want to be a star if this is what it takes. "It's _creepy_," he says desperately.

"If you knew him, you wouldn't say that," Ryan says.

_If you knew him like I do_, Spencer fills in mentally. "Well," he says, "I guess maybe you know him better than you know me."

"Shut up" Ryan says almost dismissively, "You're my best friend–"

"Yeah" Spencer says, "Your best friend who isn't even worth as much as the fucking _scene_." And he turns and walks out. He looks back once. The shadows under Ryan's eyes look like bruises.

Three hours later, he's feeling bad enough that he calls Ryan. Ryan doesn't pick up. Spencer plays their argument over and over in his head, Ryan yelling, actually _yelling_ that he isn't exactly inexperienced, and Spencer yelling back that writing _porn_ about Pete on the internet isn't he same thing.

Spencer wants to hit things. How does it all fit together, exactly, Ryan wanting Brendon and hating Brendon and whoring himself out to Pete and bad-mouthing gay people with fear in his eyes?

Half an hour later, Ryan shows up on the doorstep like nothing ever happened and reads bits of Chuck Palahniuk novels to Spencer for hours. He lets Spencer play with his hair, but Spencer is looking harder at his eyes.

*

They survive Pete Wentz, like they survive everything. Spencer even stops wanting hit Pete whenever he seems him. Just when they're getting comfortable, though, Brent leaves and Jon Walker shows up and Ryan is twitchy and strange again. This time, Spencer knows what to look for, and he can see Ryan's eyes narrow when Brendon snuggles up to Jon.

That night, Spencer is going to tell Jon how much he hates him for messing stuff up again. They're hanging around outside the bus, and Spencer opens his mouth.

"What's up?" Jon asks.

And somehow, what comes out is, "I hate Ryan." _What?_ Spencer thinks. _Did I just say that?_

"But he's your best friend," he hears Jon say, frowning a little, once he figures out that Spencer isn't joking.

"Yeah," says Spencer, "but can _you_ imagine being best friends with Ryan?" _What, what, what?_ And all of a sudden he wants to find a way to make Jon see that "best friends" doesn't always mean two people who'd do anything for each other. Sometimes it means the only person who'd talk to you in high school who's actually sort of a dick.

That night, Spencer can't sleep at all. Then, at five a.m., he hears Ryan awake and humming Blink 182 and scribbling in a notebook, dark circles inscribed under his eyes. _Love_, Spencer thinks, trying the word out. _Not hate_. Shit.

*

Then there are the two great tragedies of Ryan's life: his father's death and the breaking up of Blink 182. The former is after Spencer's Great Revelation, and the latter is before, and he isn't sure what that means. When Blink breaks up, Spencer feels like there's nothing he can do that will be enough. When Ryan's father dies, Spencer _knows_ that there's nothing he can do that will be enough. That doesn't stop him from wanting to kiss Ryan, to fix it, to press his lips to the spot directly under Ryan's eyes, the spot that isn't wet with tears.

*

The fall after his father dies, Ryan is still quiet and withdrawn, even more so than before. Spencer's honestly worried, and he has no idea what to do until Ryan wants to open the hell up.

Finally, after months of silence, Ryan gives him a clue. He starts leaving dumb little quotes on the bedside tabels in hotels, or in Spencer's bed on the bus. He'll quote Chuck Palahniuk, or Blink 182, or even My Chem or Fall Out Boy. For once, though, it doesn't seem like he's trying to say anything particular. He's just writing words until something makes sense.

And what the fuck, is this what their lives are going to be now? Communicating through lyrics? They're not Pete and Patrick, and Spencer, unlike Ryan, doesn't want to be.

One night, they're sitting in a hotel room together, and Spencer feels something change. Jon and Brendon are in the next room over, something Ryan stopped sulking about over the summer. He's too busy hurting. "Hey," he says, under his breath.

Spencer waits.

"_If_, though," Ryan says, "if you _had_ to be pick a Blink lyric that you are." It's as though he's picking up a conversation they never started.

Spencer's annoyed. He doesn't even think. "'Josie,'" he says.

"'My girlfriend takes me home when I'm too drunk to drive?" Ryan asks, wrinkling his brow.

"Not only that," Spencer presses, "She laughs at his dumb jokes. She takes collect calls from the road."

"And he knows that everything's gonna be fine," Ryan finishes.

Spencer was lying, though. Right now the one running through his head is, _But I'd play with fire to break the ice, and I'd play with a nuclear device_. Because if he doesn't kiss Ryan now, it will be _years_ before he does, and he can feel it with the deadening certainty of now or never.

He leans forward a little, but enough so that Ryan can't mistake what he's about to do. Ryan doesn't move, he just watches Spencer with those huge eyes that so rarely make contact with anyone else's. "Um," Ryan says, "When I met you. Um."

"Yeah," Spencer says, "You, too. And every day since then." Every day, every conversation, every fucking sleep-over. He's going out a limb here, but he doesn't care.

Ryan inches forward until their noses brush together. "I don't want to fuck this up," he whispers.

Spencer takes Ryan's chin firmly in one hand. "You can't," he says, and he kisses him.

It's not a great kiss. In fact, it kind of sucks. Guess how much Spencer cares. His breath hitches in his throat and he feels Ryan's do the same, and suddenly their hands are tangled together awkwardly, and it's _awesome_.

Spencer pulls back after a second, and he wants to tell Ryan how _beautiful_ he is, but it feels weird. They've known each other since forever, he should be used to Ryan's stupid face by now. Besides, Ryan doesn't like being told he's pretty, which is _also_ weird, because he spent so many of his early teen years being a giant camwhore.

Ryan smiles a little. "You know, you're really beautiful. Which, uh, is the wrong thing to say."

"I _love_ you," Spencer says. If he doesn't say it now . . .

"You better mean that," Ryan says, and the streetlights outside the hotel room cast weird shadows on his face, making him look young and scared.

"It's _me_," Spencer says.

Ryan makes a noise that's half laugh and half sob, and Spencer realizes how rough things have been lately.

"Hey," he says, and he presses a hand against the side of Ryan's face.

"Spencer," Ryan says breathlessly, "If I ask you to sleep with me, will I ruin everything in the world?"

"Depends," Spencer says carefully. "Why do you want to sleep together?"

Ryan rests his head against Spencer's hand. "I. Um. I love you, remember?"

Spencer laughs with relief. "You didn't actually say that, Ryan."

"I say it all the time."

Spencer taps the side of Ryan's face lightly. "I didn't know you meant it like _that_, idiot."

"I do," Ryan says, "Oh god, I do, and nothing else works right now, so can this work?"

Spencer wants to punch whoever made Ryan think that he doesn't deserve everything in the world to work. He pulls him into another kiss. "It'll work," he says.

Ryan edges closer until he's almost in Spencer's lap. "Please," he mutters.

Spencer shakes his head. As if Ryan ever needed to ask. He wraps his arms securely around Ryan and pulls him close, still kissing him. Then Ryan is shoving more insistently, and Spencer finds himself tipping backwards until he's sprawled on the bed, legs half-on and half-off, Ryan straddling him.

He decides to stop worrying about Ryan and start feeling good about this, because maybe Ryan isn't _completely_ emotionally retarded, and Spencer has wanted this for years.

Ryan's hands are barely shaking when he unzips Spencer's jeans. Spencer lets his head fall back on the bed and Ryan slides off the bed and onto his knees, hooking his elbows up over the edge of the bed.

After a moment where Spencer really has no fucking _idea_ what Ryan is thinking, Ryan leans forward and gingerly runs his tongue the length of Spencer's cock. Spencer wants to scream, and oh, maybe Pete was making a smart move, whatever his motivation. Ryan does it again, and Spencer moans.

Ryan gasps sharply against the inside of Spencer's thigh. "F-fuck," Spencer manages, "Are you sure this is ok?"

Ryan huffs out a little breath. "Yeah. Yes. I wouldn't be doing it otherwise." He sounds a little panicky, though, and Spencer wants to gather him up to eye level and kiss him until he's not afraid of anything anymore.

Ryan takes a deep breath, and splays his hands on either side of Spencer's body. "Ok," he says.

Spencer is already hard, and the sudden pressure of Ryan's mouth around his cock is almost too much. He wants to freak out. Instead, he winds his fingers into the sheets and tries not to shove his hips upward.

Ryan stops suddenly, and Spencer instantly misses the heat of his mouth. "Uh," Ryan says, "I want you to know that this is ok."

"I, you, _yes_, you just said," Spencer says, and Ryan grins awkwardly and goes down again.

And ok, Spencer hasn't _done_ this a lot, so it doesn't take much more of Ryan's mouth before he's practically begging.

"I'm gonna," he gasps, and Ryan pulls off, almost jerks away. _That's ok_, Spencer thinks wildy, in between watching white sparks go off behind his eyes and all up and down his body. _This is us. We've got time_. He wouldn't have wanted Ryan to swallow.

Ryan gets awkwardly to his feet, shaking a little. You wouldn't see it if you weren't looking. Spencer knows Ryan well enough to look. "Uh," Ryan says awkwardly.

"C'mere," Spencer says, trying unsuccessfully to shake off the wonderful daze. Ryan slumps next to him, his whole body tense. Spencer reaches forward slowly and unzips Ryan's pants. Ryan makes no move to help or stop him, but he shuts his eyes.

Spencer takes Ryan's cock in his hand, kind of unsure of what the hell to do next. It only takes a few uncertain strokes of Spencer's hand, though, before Ryan is coming, spilling out all the words he's been keeping bottled up since his dad died, or maybe even longer.

They lie side-by-side, legs still dangling half-off the bed. Spencer presses his lips to Ryan's forehead.

"It's been rough," Ryan whispers so quietly that Spencer almost can't hear him.

Weird. Ryan never admits that he's been through _hell_. Of course, with Spencer, he's just never needed to. Spencer's been there, he's seen everything, he knows. This time, though, they almost feel like strangers (as if a stranger is the only one Ryan will admit this too.)

And then, Ryan whispers lyrics into the half-light from the lamp. "'I would do anything and that's what scares me so bad, don't want to live my life alone, don't want to go back to what I had. Don't want to spend my life without all those special things, don't want to walk around being tied to anyone else's–"

"'Strings,'" Spencer says instantly. "And shut up. I think you kinda made the choice when you kissed me. It's _me_, Ryan."

Ryan props himself up on one elbow and looks at Spencer. Spencer can see the shadows under his eyes, the memory of a bruise. "'Always, I know, you'll be at my show?'" Ryan tries, starting to smile.

"No shit," Spencer says.

"So," Ryan says, snuggling back down into the crook of Spencer's arm, "Now we're dating like Pete and Patrick."

Spencer is tempted to shove him off the bed, but he resists.


End file.
